ance to his opinions, he was rash in their formation; and his exuberant courage was liable to collapse in the presence of new and appalling forms of danger. Of such a character the narrative of St. Peter's denial and repentance, his fall and recovery, offers a natural exposition.

"Peter stood more firmly after he had lamented his fall than before he fell; insomuch that he found more grace than he lost grace." These words of St. Ambrose are appended, in Quarles's "Emblems," to a poem in paraphrase of the text: "A just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again; but the wicked shall fall into mischief" (Proverbs xxiv. 16).

'Tis but a foil at best, and that's the most

Your skill can boast:

My slippery footing failed me; and you tript,
Just as I slipt:

My wanton weakness did herself betray
With too much play:

I was too bold: he never yet stood sure,
That stands secure :

Who ever trusted in his native strength,
But fell at length?

The title's crazed, the tenure is not good,
That claims by th'evidence of flesh and blood.

Boast not thy skill; the righteous man falls oft
Yet falls but soft:

There may be dirt to mire him, but no stones
To crush his bones :

What if he staggers? Nay, but case he be
Foiled on his knee?

That very knee will bend to Heaven, and woo
For mercy too.

The true-bred gamester ups afresh, and then
Falls to 't again;

Whereas the leaden-hearted coward lies,

And yields his conquered life, or cravened dies.

Boast not thy conquest; thou that every hour
Fall'st ten times lower;

STABILITY BY FALLING.

Nay, hast not power to rise, if not, in case,
To fall more base:

Thou wallow'st where I slip; and thou dost tumble
Where I but stumble :

Thou glory'st in thy slavery's dirty badges,
And fall'st for wages;

Sour grief and sad repentance scours and clears
My stains with tears:

Thy falling keeps thy falling still in ure;
But when I slip, I stand the more secure.

LORD, what a nothing is this little span,
We call a MAN!

What fenny trash maintains the smothering fires
Of his desires!

How slight and short are his resolves at longest :
How weak at strongest!

Oh, if a sinner, held by that fast hand,

Can hardly stand,

Good GOD! in what a desperate case are they,
That have no stay!

Man's state implies a necessary curse;

411

When not himself, he's mad; when most himself, he's worse.

The practical piety of George Wither extracts from the circumstances of St. Peter's fall a warning and a prayer. The verses which, in the "Hymns and Songs of the Church," illustrate "St. Peter's Day," are the following:

How watchful need we to become,

And how devoutly pray,

That Thee, O Lord, we fall not from,
Upon our trial day!

For if Thy great Apostle said

He would not Thee deny,

Whom he that very night denayed,
On what shall we rely?

For of ourselves we cannot leave

One pleasure for Thy sake;

No, nor one virtuous thought conceive,
Till us Thou able make:

St. John Baptist's Day.

JUNE 24.

S

T. John the Baptist was an embodiment of the highest Jewish hopes of his time, an incarnate epitome of the purest national aspirations; and

his ministry constituted the transition period between the Mosaic and Christian dispensations. The last and greatest of the Old Testament order of Prophets, one, indeed, who, as the Forerunner of the Messiah, was "much more than a prophet"; he was yet less than "the least in the kingdom of God" (Luke vii. 26-28). "He was behind Christianity, because he was yet prejudiced by his concepception of the Theocracy as external; because he did not clearly know that Messiah was to found His kingdom by sufferings, and not by miraculously triumphing over His foes; because he did not conceive that His kingdom was to show itself from the first, not in visible appearing, but as a Divine power, to develop itself spiritually from within outward, and thus gradually to overcome and take possession of the world. The least among those who understood the nature and process of development of the Divine Kingdom, in connection with Christ's redemption, is in this respect greater than the Baptist, who stood upon the dividing line of the two spiritual eras. But John was above the prophets (and Christ so declared) because he conceived of the Mes

siah and His kingdom in a higher and more spiritual sense than they had done, and because he directly pointed men to Christ, and recognised Him as the manifested Messiah."*

John the Baptist was not alone in his retirement into the desert for contemplative and didactic purposes; for many of his contemporaries, pious and earnest men among the Jews, disgusted with the corruptions of the times, retired, like the monks and hermits of Christianity at a later day, into wilderness places, and there, becoming teachers of Divine wisdom, collected disciples around them. The surpassing distinction of John above these preachers of righteousness was that he alone had been designated in Prophecy, and announced by the Angel Gabriel, as the Messenger to prepare the way before Him for whose deferred arrival the hearts of Israel were faint; and that he alone should have the honour of heralding the " Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John i. 29).

His appearance, training, and manner of life in the desert are sketched in the following lines from the late Rev. Robert Montgomery's "Messiah":

The great precursor, whose proclaiming voice,

Repent ye!" travelled on the desert wind,

Was robed in hairy sackcloth; round his loins
A leathern girdle wound; the mountain spring,
That bubbled through the vale, his drink supplied;
His meat was honey, and the locust wild.-
Alone, but angel-watched, the orphan grew
To manhood; nursed amid the elements,
A son of Nature,-where the desert waved
Her wildest bough, or flung her blackest gloom,
The caverned eremite with God communed,
In storm or stillness, when the thunder voiced
His anger, or the sunshine brought His smile!
One awful loneliness His life became,
In thought and prayer mysteriously it passed;

*Neander's Life of Jesus Christ.

And oft sublime!-as when at sunset hour
A red magnificence of dying hues
Came o'er the desert, and each rocky cres
Of mountains with volcanic lustre blazed,
While slept the sultry air,-the prophet knelt;
And the wild glory of his dreaming eye

To heaven was turned, in meditative awe!
The hush of woods, the hymn of waters faint
nd a blue prospect of the midland sea
Beyond the desert, glimmering and vast,
And dying cadence of some distant bird,
Whose song was fading like a silver cloud,—
While thus around Creation charmed, and looked,
Earth had no grander scene, than when the hour,
Of Syrian twilight heard the Baptist pray!

As the position of John the Baptist is unique amongst the Saints of the Old Dispensation; so his honours are unique amongst the Saints of the New. Whilst all the rest are commemorated on the day on which they “migrated to their Lord"-St. Paul excepted, the anniversary of whose Conversion, rather than that of his martyrdom, is observed it is the actual Nativity of the Baptist which is singled out for special veneration, on account not only of his peculiar character, but of the significant events which preceded his birth, and of his consecration to the Divine service from the very womb. There was anciently another day, the 9th of August, set apart as the anniversary of his Beheading; which the Romish Church still celebrates by the title of Festum Decollationis, being a corruption, according to Durandus, of Festum Collectionis Sancti Johannis Baptista, the Feast of the Gathering-up of the Relics of St. John the Baptist.

The Martyrdom of the Baptist would not appear, however, to have been entirely omitted from consideration on the anniversary of his Nativity; and Augusti conjectures that the Festum Decollationis, the feast of the Beheading, which occurs in the Sacramentary of Gregory